Several surgical procedures and interventions require precise tissue manipulation or insertion of surgical instruments and/or accessories in the body. To carry out the optimal procedural and technical tasks, several factors must be taken into consideration to place surgical instruments and/or accessories in soft tissue or bone, or perform procedures like incision, cuts, removals, suturing, stitching, etc. These factors include, but are not limited to, minimizing complication risk, reducing pain, and accelerating recovery time. To assist a surgeon or a surgical system (for example, a robot) in making a better decision on where to interact with tissue, advanced imaging systems and analysis software which provide decision support for optimal outcome must be developed.
Multispectral image acquisition is an advanced imaging technique to capture scene information at different spectral wavelengths. Multispectral images provide structural properties of scene objects that may not be visible from a single channel (i.e., a single channel corresponding to an image obtained using a particular spectral wavelength). Multispectral images can also reveal subsurface structures at higher wavelengths (near-infrared and infrared wavelengths). In medicine, multispectral imaging has been widely used in cancer detection and blood oxygen saturation observations from skin. Polarization-sensitive imaging is another advanced imaging technique that utilizes the scattering and polarization properties of light propagating in the tissue. By adjusting polarization states depending on the light penetration depth, polarization control techniques can be used for depth-selective measurement. An advantage of polarization-sensitive imaging is the elimination of specular reflection from the tissue surface and clear identification of deep tissue structures, which is useful for the surgical procedures and interventions.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,285,015 describes an image acquisition device which forms multispectral images from decomposition of an image into multiple component parts based on the type of imaging, but does not disclose any quantitate post-processing of acquired images. While there has been work in developing multispectral and polarization-sensitive imaging systems, there are currently no systems that analyze and quantify the images from multispectral and polarization-sensitive imaging systems to provide recommendations regarding portions of a patient's anatomy that are appropriate for surgical procedure and other portions of the patient's anatomy that are not appropriate for surgical procedure.
Blood vessels should be avoided during suturing to mitigate tissue damage and encourage faster recovery. U.S. Pat. No. 8,611,629 describes an interactive method for blood vessel analysis. A user indicates a position on a vessel of the tubular structure, which is then used to identify a portion of the tubular structure situated around the indicated position, including any bifurcations, and extending up to a predetermined distance measured from the indicated position, for obtaining an identified portion. Other blood vessel segmentation algorithms have been described in the literature. Bankhead et al., included along with the information disclosure statement, describes a fast and accurate unsupervised algorithm to detect blood vessels based on undecimated wavelet transform. Blood vessel segmentation provides limited structural information of a patient's anatomy and therefore, has not been used for providing recommendations to a surgeon or a surgical system regarding portions of the patient's anatomy that are appropriate for surgical procedure and portions of the patient's anatomy that are not appropriate for surgical procedure.
The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present invention.